Burn the Factory Blueprints: A New Model for Public Education
Why schools are failing our kids, and how to rebuild the system to produce creators, not compliant workers.
Let’s stop pretending the public education system is broken.
It’s not.
It’s doing exactly what it was designed to do: Train compliance, obedience, and memorization.
It was built during the Industrial Revolution to create reliable workers, not revolutionary thinkers, and it’s still running on that 19th-century code.
Elon Musk recently said it best:
“The current education system is designed for a different era… It doesn’t foster creativity, and it doesn’t teach people how to think critically or solve real-world problems.”
He’s right.
And anyone who’s stepped into a modern classroom knows it.
We’re teaching kids to regurgitate facts they can Google in seconds, while downplaying or outright ignoring the skills that actually matter: Critical thinking, creativity, emotional intelligence, communication, and adaptability.
So, how do we fix it?
We don’t slap on another test.
We don’t add more homework.
We burn the blueprint and start building a system for the world we live in now.
Here Are Six Changes I’d Make:
1. Kill Standardized Testing
Standardized tests reward memorization and penalize curiosity.
These tests force teachers to prioritize a random “cookie-cutter” curriculum over their individual students and force everyone to focus on the final grade instead of individual growth.
Standardized tests have taught kids to play it safe and not think differently, as that detracts from their chances at acing the test.
Why spend time on something that won’t be graded?
Real life isn’t multiple choice, and there are daily news articles about how those who were successful in school, got their degrees, are struggling with bills, jobs, and life satisfaction…
So why do we keep doing the same thing?
Proposed Solution: Replace tests with project-based assessments and portfolio work. Let students show what they can do, not just what they can remember.
2. Teach How to Think, Not What to Think
This is the first lesson I taught my students this year. They walked into my class, and before we opened a textbook or discussed any subject matter, I told them my job and expectations.
I told them I wanted them to challenge me, argue, and not hide disagreement or “taboo subjects”, and the end result was having students who started questioning the narrative, and kids in class who felt seen and heard, some for the first time in years, per their admission.
Public schools pump out parrots, not thinkers.
We need to be teaching (through our examples as much as lectures) logic, rhetoric, and problem-solving; we don’t need to memorize dates, definitions, and formulas.
Proposed Solution: Introduce critical thinking, debate, and Socratic discussion into every subject from an early age. Let kids wrestle with ideas, not just recite them.
3. Prioritize Real-World Application
When’s the last time you needed to diagram a sentence or find the area under a curve in daily life?
When is the last time you did not have a phone, AI, or friend to help you crunch some big numbers?
I’m all for advanced material being taught to the kids who want to go and learn it.
Unfortunately, in a society operating off compulsory education, we are forcing kids who would be A students if they were learning how to weld, dig, and build to receive F’s instead because they couldn’t care less about the subject matter forced onto them.
These grades make the kids feel bad, hate school, and start a cycle of rebellion and self-destruction.
QUICK STORY I’VE TOLD ALL MY STUDENTS:
I was a horrible student, but it wasn’t because I lacked intelligence.
I have a Bachelor’s Degree, Master’s Degree, started multiple businesses, helped thousands of people change their lives, spoke on multiple stages, and rose the rank of every company I’ve been a part of while maintaining a healthy marriage, raising two happy children, and navigating a horrible start to my life with multiple childhood traumas having to be overcome.
How does a shitty student find so much success?
Because schools were testing me on how well I could swim with the other “fish” in the school, the problem was that I was a monkey.
If we had been judged on how well we could climb, I’d have been Valedictorian.
We aren’t judging students on life skills or potential, we’re judging them on how well and fast they can conform and adapt to the authority over them…
That is a recipe for a sad life and a future filled with struggles.
Meanwhile, kids graduate unable to balance a budget, navigate emotional conflict, don’t know they have rights, are allowed to stand against authority, and are conditioned to offload solving basic life problems.
Proposed Solution: Every class should connect to life outside the classroom. Math should teach personal finance. Science should connect to health, nature, and innovation. English should be about persuasion, storytelling, and public speaking.
4. Make Creativity Mandatory
Creativity isn’t a luxury; it’s a survival skill
Yet, it’s the first cut from budgets and schedules.
All focus is dedicated towards a standardized test, because funding is tied to the test, so schools opt to make it a priority, which again, means the test is placed higher than the student.
Proposed Solution: Art, music, design, outdoor construction, and innovation labs should be core subjects taught and connected with funding. These skill-developing arenas should not be electives or afterthoughts.
Life skills should be core classes.
5. Let Teachers Lead Like Entrepreneurs
Right now, most teachers are treated like cogs in a machine.
Follow the script.
You teach the lines given to you, no more or less.
Don’t rock the boat.
Check the boxes.
Proposed Solution: Give teachers the power to design their classrooms like startups. Let them experiment; let them fail; let them lead.
The best education comes from the most passionate educators, not the best policies.
6. Build Schools That Mirror Reality
We don’t live in isolated subjects.
We don’t work, live, or operate with people of the same age, and we don’t do things we have zero interest in doing.
Life is interdisciplinary.
School should be too.
Solution: Replace siloed classes with interdisciplinary teams working on real-world challenges. Think Shark Tank for 5th graders, or TEDx-style presentations from middle schoolers. Get some engineering teams out there solving community problems in high school.
Focus on What the Kids Need, Not the Companies
To fix our public education system, we don’t need to add more homework; We need to add more heart, passion, humanity, and truth to how the world operates so these young minds are prepared to succeed.
The world our kids are inheriting is changing fast, and schools are falling further and further behind; unless we change how we teach them, they’ll be stuck playing by rules that no longer apply, and thus, losing at life, which is what schools are meant to prepare kids for.
It’s time to stop preparing kids for factory jobs they’ll never take.
It’s time to start preparing them to lead, create, and build the future.
Let’s burn the factory model down and build something worth passing down.
- Zac Small
PS: The worst part is that many of the teachers in the system would be better off if they were given the freedom to run their classes as they wanted to. It isn’t the teachers, assistant principals, or principals; it’s the system.
Our current system works, the deterioration we see is a byproduct of the design.